Ignoring Your Health? It’s Not Healthy!

It’s very easy to take a lot of what we currently have in life for granted. The home that protects us from the weather. The walls that keep us safe. The food that keeps us warm. The love we have from our family and loved ones. Friendships. Technology. The cars that take us from A to B to C. When life is good – and even when it isn’t – there is a lot we can easily take for granted. Simply because all of these things are a seemingly natural part of modern life. Taking things for granted is just part of the human condition at this point, we all expect a good life. We all expect a healthy one too – but our health is something we are really taking for granted.

There are plenty of reasons for this, but we seem to have lost all ability to ration and be a lot more conservative with our dietary habits. What’s more, bad food is cheap. It’s also shoved in our faces a lot more thanks to commercials and advertisements which run rampant on our radios and on our TVs. We can’t escape the pull of bad food. We are also using cars and other methods of transport more often, which means we need to often go out and seek exercise – which can be hard to come to terms with if you’ve been at work all day. Exercise isn’t a natural part of life anymore, not with long working days and commutes. Modern life doesn’t seem to be that great for health. There are a lot of new medicines, superfoods, and techniques, but we’re also finding more and more opportunities to live an unhealthy lifestyle.

We have to actively choose a healthy lifestyle, because unhealthy seems to be the default right now. We can choose to become healthy for many reasons. We might want to look slimmer, lose weight, tone up, or just find a way to be healthy in general. Every one of these is a valid reason to become healthy – but the thing is, it cannot be at all temporary. A healthy lifestyle can’t be a switch we can flick on and off. Unfortunately. We need to be serious about our healthy lifestyle. We cannot ignore our health at all, not in the slightest.

If we are ignoring our health, we need to find out why. Ignoring our health isn’t a wise decision, because it means we are being unhealthy, and it means we are not being mindful about our bodies in the slightest. We need to consider what we do with our bodies and how we fuel them. We also need to find the motivation to be healthy.

One of the first things we need to do when we want to get healthy is to find our current state of health. This means we need to book in with a doctor. If you aren’t registered with your local medical practice, you need to do so. Health is something that needs to be taken importantly. We can only assess the current state of our health via a checkup from the doctor, we need a professional’s take here. We can see if we have too much cholesterol in our bodies, we can see if we are overweight. Sometimes, these checkups can be lifesavers. Doctors aren’t just there for checkups but can provide and prescribe a wide range of health measures to ensure a healthy lifestyle is lived. From serious issues like HIV testing to other things like a flu jab or antibiotic prescriptions – doctors can do a lot for us, and we shouldn’t take them for granted, not at all. We’re scared of the doctors because we do not like bad news – but you should consider booking a checkup if you have not already.

We need to ensure we exercise – in anyway we can. Whether we do some light weights for 15 or so minutes every two or three days, with walking or running taking place on every interval day – or we go all out and hit the gym. It all matters and contributes towards getting healthy. We don’t need to be Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jillian Michaels in the gym, we just need to do a little bit to get our blood pumping to ensure our bodies can stay healthy. Of course, if you’re willing to put the hours in – the gym can be very rewarding.

However, it’s not just exercising. If we can add exercise to our life and burn some calories, we can lose weight – but are we healthy? No – not really. No matter what you do, your health is at risk if you’re still eating poor foods. Food is the fuel of our body, and some foods can be useless as a fuel. If we aren’t eating well, our healthy lifestyle can crumble.

What type of foods should we avoid? It depends on who you are – you should always check with a doctor before making extreme changes to your diet. However, in general we should avoid foods that are processed as they have effects on our digestive system. We struggle to digest processed foods – which includes salted and cured meats. These are usually red meats, so if you’re a carnivore – stick to white meats like chicken and fish. If you’re a veggie, you’re in the clear, just avoid eating lots of doughy and fatty food – make sure you actually eat some vegetables!

Eating badly is going to ruin your hard work and your health. Make your diet the focus of everything you do in health and get it sorted out before you embark. You’ll be rewarded for that. Diet isn’t just a route to losing weight – it’s a fuel, remember that!

Nobody said health is easy – but it cannot be ignored at all. You need to dedicate yourself to it and you might need to rework bits of your life, it’s worth it though. In the long run, health is all we have. Let’s not take it for granted anymore.